BSDI works and comes with gated, though not the latest. The Riscom-N2
is supported by BSDI and can give you 2 56k or even T1 lines speaking
Cisco HDLC or PPP. I can't say I've ever tried it, but some people
say it would all work fine. You could also take a subset of full
routing since you probably won't be doing transit between major
providers.
We have hosts running gated to gather routing statistics. Our routers
are also running gated. They are RS6ks running custom interfaces and
a modified AIX kernel. 64MB RAM works for us. Many of our machines
have 32 MB of RAM.
PSC runs DEC Alphas with gated. This is a supported but expensive
option. Handy if you have a Cray and don't want a wimpy router in
your FDDI path. Avoid sys5 based stuff like Solaris and SGI Irix
since it can't do CIDR routes and barfs badly on overlapped routes.
Probably HP too. That leave DEC OSF and AIX. You could probably go
with NetBSD on an older Sun. For PCs there is BSDI, FreeBSD, Linx.
If you can afford to be dual homed, you probably can afford a router
rather than a PC serving as a router. I'd love to hear how things go
if you go with BSDI. There is also an Emerging Technologies T1/56k
card that claims ISDN LAPB, FR, X.25, Cisco HDLC, PPP and which sounds
great on paper but I haven't heard any user testimonials yet.
Curtis
> Would anyone be willing to share their experiences with (or thoughts
> about) this approach? Given that 64 MB of RAM for routing tables
> woudl cost only around $2,000, this seems like a totally sensible way
> to build a small, multi-homed AS. Will finding a vendor-supported
> system for this be ... difficult? (I'm not exactly sure whether a
> BSD box running Cornell GateD counts as "vendor-supported". 
BSDI works and comes with gated, though not the latest. The Riscom-N2
is supported by BSDI and can give you 2 56k or even T1 lines speaking
Cisco HDLC or PPP. I can't say I've ever tried it, but some people
say it would all work fine. You could also take a subset of full
routing since you probably won't be doing transit between major
providers.
Emerging Technologies also makes sync cards with drivers supported under
BSDI, FreeBSD and some forms of SysV UNIX.
They have been discussed on either (or both) the inet-access and
bsdi-users lists in the past. Archives for inet-access are at earth.com
(or is that ftp.earth.com) and for bsdi-users at ftp.bsdi.com. There is
sometimes a search engine available for bsdi-users from a link at
http://www.bsdi.com.
I got my info by emailing dennis@et.htp.com but you could phone
(516) 271-4525 or fax (516) 271-4814
So there are at least two possibilities for building 80x86 boxes into
routers by using off-the-shelf sync cards and UNICES.
with NetBSD on an older Sun. For PCs there is BSDI, FreeBSD, Linux.
I believe that support for sync cards under Linux is fairly new. Tread
carefully there.
If you can afford to be dual homed, you probably can afford a router
rather than a PC serving as a router.
There is also the question of support, spares, previous knowledgebase etc.
Build-your-own isn't for everyone but it is nice to have a choice.
Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-549-1036
Network Operations Fax: +1-604-542-4130
Okanagan Internet Junction Internet: michael@junction.net
http://www.junction.net - The Okanagan's 1st full-service Internet provider